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Overview

Jews, God, and History by Max I. Dimont

Philosophers and kings, warriors and merchants, poets and financiers come alive as the story ranges across time and the globe. From ancient Palestine through Europe and the Orient, to America and modern Israel, Max Dimont shows how the saga of the Jews is interwoven with the history of virtually every nation on earth. Brilliantly narrated in a thousand and one episodes, this newly revised and updated edition tells the story of a people escaping annihilation and cultural death, fighting, falling back, advancing. Infused with an almost miraculous life force, they have survived the death of civilizations and have triumphantly contributed to man's spiritual and intellectual heritage for some four thousand years.

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About the Author

Max I. Dimont, author of The Indestructible Jews, The Jews in America, The Amazing Adventures of the Jewish People, and Appointment in Jerusalem, was born in Helsinki, Finland, and came to the United States in 1930. He taught himself English by reading Shakespeare’s plays, the Bible, and American plays translated into Finnish. After serving in intelligence with the U.S. Army during World War II, he worked in public relations and employee relations for Edison Brothers Stores in St. Louis. Following the first publication of the bestselling Jews, God and History, he lectured extensively on Jewish history throughout the United States, Canada, South Africa, Brazil, and Finland until his death in 1992.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Jews, God, and History (50th Anniversary Edition) 4.3 out of 5based on
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10 reviews.

ShufMH

More than 1 year ago

Max I. Dimont's "Jews, God and History" is the best history of the Jewish people. Encompassing 4,000 years of history, from approximately 2,000 B.C. through 1993, "Jews, God and History" is comprehensive in its facts, and magnificent in its prose. Dimont's writing is concise when it should be concise, expansive when it should be expansive, and always intelligent. Dimont's analysis is strikingly original and very sharp. If you care about Jewish history, or world history, you must read this book. Without reading this book, you will not know all of the contributions of the Jewish people to history. "Jews, God and History" is indispensable.

JosephCopeli

More than 1 year ago

Jews, God and History is a phenomenal work which undertakes the difficult and tedious task of presenting the 4,000 year history of the Jewish people. Instead of presenting this history from an insulated point of view, author Max I. Dimont shows the history of the Jews in the context of the entire world; in the vast tapestry of human history on this planet, the Jewish people are shown to be a strand that makes its way through every corner of the fabric.
Dimont immediately draws the attention of the reader in his introduction, musing about how such a small population of people have had such influence on the greater world. Some of the most influential people in history were Jews: Moses, Jesus, Paul, Baruch Spinoza, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein. Two of the largest world religions, Christianity and Islam, grew out of Judaism. The Jews introduced to the world the concepts of monotheism, prayer, church, redemption, universal education and charity. Perhaps the most interesting idea that Dimont brings up in his introduction is the age of the Jewish civilization; whereas all the other pagan civilizations that existed at the time have long since disappeared, the Jews are still around today. Dimont goes on to say,
"The Chinese, Hindu, and Egyptian peoples are the only ones living today who are as old as the Jewish people. But these three civilizations had only one main cultural period, and their impact on succeeding civilizations has not been great. They contained neither the seeds for their own rebirth nor the seeds for the birth of other civilizations. Unlike the Jews, they were not driven out of their countries, nor did they face the problem of survival in alien lands. The Greeks and the Romans are the only other nations which have influenced the history of Western man as profoundly as the Jews. But the people who now dwell in Greece and Italy are not the same as those who dwelt in ancient Hellas and Rome."
Needless to say, these facts makes the reader wonder "what is so special about the Jews?" and Dimont makes his best effort to answer this question in the most scholarly way possible, even explaining eight different theories on interpreting history and how they apply to the Jewish people.
Although Dimont uses the Bible as a source for his telling of early Jewish history, he makes it clear that he is approaching the material from a secular standpoint. On the subject of Abraham having a vision from God, Dimont states that the most important part of the encounter is not if God actually appeared to Abraham or if Abraham dreamed up the whole thing; what matters is that Abraham decided that he had a covenant with God, and his descendants continued to have that covenant. Dimont stresses that this point so important that Jewish history is built on it: the covenant that the Jews believed they had with God gave them the will to survive as Jews, which is a main reason why the Jewish people didn't simply disappear into the many civilizations they lived in throughout history.
In the chapters where he describes the Jewish religion, Dimont really shines. He explains the beliefs, rituals and scholarship in a way that is both accurate and accessible to people completely new to the material. It is in these chapters that he describes a crucial moment in Jewish history: the shifting of the religion from sacrificial...
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